With help of the add-on Animation Nodes for Blender I created a simple Circle Array generator. I still plan to add more functionality, but you can download version 1 below.

At this stage a float is used to control the radius, an interger to change the number of clones.
Spin (rotation along longitudinal axis) controlled via a curve, same is true for the twist.
Object Input: here you can link the object to be cloned.

To move or rotate the complete array, select the empty „Circle Array“ and use according transform tools.Download Circle Array v1 for Animation Nodes 2 and Blender 2.79a: Circle Array v1